Today, it is possible to share multiple page documents and collections of documents with others in a networked environment, such as the World Wide Web (hereinafter simply referred to as the “web”). However, linking these collections of documents in a useful manner may be a tedious task. Typically, linking is done by providing links on each web page to other web pages or documents. A user may click on one of the links appearing on the web page in a browser to navigate to the other web page or document. In order to easily navigate the collection of documents without causing confusion or being cumbersome to the user, the links shown on each web page should allow navigation of the website with a reasonable number of mouse clicks, and without displaying an overwhelming number of links on any one web page.
The creation of the links on each web page may be performed by a web author or designer by inserting a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for each link appearing on the web page. However, creating and designing a web page by typing in URLs is typically tedious, error prone and very time consuming. In addition, updating links that are scattered across several interconnected web pages can be a real chore. Therefore, the web designer may choose to use a website creation tool, which, among other features, provides a user interface (UI) for creating web pages. One popular website creation and management tool is FrontPage® 2000, developed and licensed by Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash.
Some website creation tools allow a web designer to use menus and commands to design a website's overall structure (e.g. a web page hierarchy) in a navigation view, and to provide a separate page view in which to create and lay out a web page. An object (e.g., a navigation bar) may be defined in the page view to quickly and conveniently create “live” links to other web pages based on the website structure. Such live links are defined based upon the hierarchical relationship of the web pages. For example, the live links may point to one or more web pages above the selected web page (e.g., a parent or home page), one or more web pages on the same level as the selected web page, (e.g., sibling pages), or one or more web pages below the selected web page (e.g., a child page). These live links are then displayed as part of the web page when a user views the web page via a browser.
While the navigation bar greatly simplifies the creation of certain links, this mechanism is not ideal. For example, the navigation bar is relative to the web page on which it is used, e.g., a link to a parent means one thing on pages with the same parent but something else on pages with a different parent. Moreover, current web design tools require a web designer to hierarchically define the website structure and associate links based on the hierarchical structure. Still further, the web designer typically has to switch between the navigation view and the page view to create the hierarchical website structure and the respective web pages, which can cause confusion and inconvenience the website designer, who must remember the hierarchical website structure when linking the web pages.
Given the limitations in the prior art web design tools, there is a need for a more flexible and efficient way to design websites and their pages.